Humor Me

I am, I believe, the beneficiary of a sense of humor honed by both sets of parents. My mother, ever-proud of her Irish heritage, had the gift of Blarney and instilled in me a sense of how to tell a story.

She was also a voracious reader and a deep lover of words. She taught me all about puns and double meanings and wordplay.

My dad. half-Irish, had an extremely dry sense of humor. He was, by nature, quieter (the other half of his genealogical cocktail was German), but he had a large, infectious laugh and could cut a room in half with a quick observation.

His comedic viewpoint was shaped by the movies. Dad loved W.C. Fields (master of the withering remark), The Marx Brothers, and the Blake Edwards Panther films involving Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau. He adored It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and A Christmas Story, and there was not a time they appeared on television that he didn't tune in.

So my first exposure to funny was seen through those lenses. I remember cutting my teeth on the knockabout comedy of the Stooges and the silliness of the Little Rascals, both on a steady rotation of weekday UHF channels. Bugs Bunny emerged as a sort of animated Groucho Marx, and the multiple layers of those Warner Bros. shorts began to reveal themselves. As did the sophisticated humor of Rocky and Bullwinkle (The Ruby Yacht of Omar Khayyam, anyone?).

I migrated to Abbott and Costello and still enjoy their routines, even when they get tired. The 1940s vibe of their filmography appeals, and their best work, to me, is in Who Done It?

Guilty pleasures:

• SCTV, which, in its heyday, was funnier to me than SNL. The problem became when the series exploded in popularity and, IMHO, lost its edge (I don't think it ever really recovered from the S2 loss of Harold Ramis [RIP]). 

• Whose Line Is It Anyway? I've found this show funny since its first appearance on our shores from its home in Great Britain (Clive Anderson host). Drew Carey almost killed it, thinking that he was as funny as his cast -- he wasn't -- but it somehow survived. And it's back.

 I'm now surfing comedy on the Interwebs. The YouTube series Kid Snippets has had me in stitches most recently, but I'm finding a point of diminishing returns, where overexposure is lessening comedic impact.

Anyway, as a sampling, here are some of my comedy favorites from across the ages of funnydom:

Taxi!

I know it's curmudgeonly of me, but I've got a major gripe regarding the Younger Generation in general.

Or maybe it's just my kids specifically.

But what is it with them being picked up in the car?

First off, it's constant. Amanda, our eldest, is driving, so she's pretty much off our radar. Claire, our middle-button, just got her license (causing me to almost wear out my rosary while teaching her), but she has limited access to wheels, so she's still in I-need-to-be-driven mode.

And then there's Kristin, the 13 year-old, who pretty much needs to be ferried to/from everywhere.

I know I'm speaking prehistorically, but when I was 13, I was either on my bike or hoofing it to whatever activities I needed to attend. But that was pre-Stranger Danger days when kids could dare leave their front doors and not immediately be swept away by a drug-addled molester and never seen again except on the side of a milk carton.

And I recognize those days are over. Our neighborhood is pretty isolated, and the roadways nearby are choked with traffic and drivers who aren't paying attention. Frankly, I'd worry about any of my kids commuting on them on bicycles or on foot. I know how dangerous they can be just from walking Parker twice daily. Just this morning, a pinhead driver blew by me going at least 45 in a 25 zone. God forbid one of these pea-brains behind the wheel is under the influence of alcohol, email, texts, Facebook or Google.

But when I did need to be picked up, back in the day, the rules were quite simple: If mom or dad was coming at 2 p.m. to get me, I darned well better be waiting at the corner (or outside the store, or sitting on the stoop or whatever) of the designated spot. As Dad would say, "You wait for me. I don't wait for you."

The implication was clear: Be late and be warned. Dad's leaving without you. Find your own way home, Tommy Tardy.

Part of it comes from being raised by a Navy man. Early for Dad was on time. And on time for Dad was late. And that maxim held for doctor appointments, church start-times, baseball practices, dinners, and party invitations.

So we were never late for a pickup. Never!

The cellphone has changed all of that. "Text me when you get here," is ubiquitous in our house, meaning that a study session or playdate need not end until the phone jangles the signal that the young'uns' ride is awaiting.

There's just something a little too Princess Cinderella about all that for me: "Oh, M'lady. Your carriage awaits..." "Thank you, Mr. Footman. We shall depart for the ball posthaste, I take it?"

Grr...

So I've started pre-loading the conversation. When I leave for an appointed pickup, I will text the passenger: "I'm on my way."

And once again when I arrive: "I'm here."

The trouble is, the warnings are ignored, and I'm left at the curbside, flashers blinking, traffic angrily sliding around me, while my blood pressure builds.

The worst part is that none of my passengers seem to get the reason for my displeasure: "What's the big deal, Dad? I wasn't ready..."

Oy.

 

Uncle Oscar

Watched the Academy Awards Sunday night.

For the 38th time in my life, I watched the entire broadcast. From jokey opening to final envelope.

My earliest memories of the Oscar telecast are from 1976, seeing Rocky take the statuette. Actually, I did see a lot of the year prior's ceremonies (1975, when One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest won best pix), but this was a clandestine viewing, not sanctioned by my parents. At the time, my bedroom was across the hall from theirs, where our one-and-only television set was. If I leaned out of bed and propped myself up by anchoring my left hand flat on the floor and locking my elbow, I could see the screen.

That's how I ended up watching a lot of Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher picking up awards.

Mom and Dad were both "into" movies. Mom loved those sappy MGM musicals and the Rogers and Hammerstein mega-hits. Dad loved comedies, from the Marx Brothers to It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. So I inherited a lot of this interest.

I always admired how, on Oscar night, when the camera panned the audience, they could call out: "There's Cary Grant." "There's Richard Burton." "Ooh, look at Lee Grant." "Doesn't Olivia DeHavilland look terrific?"

They'd do the same thing watching those compilation films like That's Entertainment: Howard Keel. Lena Horne. Cyd Charisse. Bobby Van. Margaret Dumont. Spencer Tracy. Joan Crawford. Mickey Rooney. Roddy McDowall. Ann Miller. Even Asta, the dog from the Thin Man films.

And so I went to school on old-time Hollywood. Until I, too, could identify Jack Lemmon or Shirley Booth on sight.

And so Oscar Night became my Super Bowl. I looked forward to it ahead of time. Jittered my way through school (or later, work) that day (remember, it used to be a Monday night, until the 1999 move), took the phone off the hook, and glued myself in place.

There were terrific moments (Jack Palance's one-armed pushups, 1992) and dumb moments (Rob Lowe/Snow White, 1989) and hilarious moments (Billy Crystal's yearly sung overture) and moments of unbridled joy (Roberto Benigni climbing over the seats, 1999).

And a whole lot of overblown production numbers, boring tributes, sketchy montages, political statements, egos run amok, dreadful best song slogs and truly touching "In Memoriam" segments.

What killed me about watching in the east was the timeframe. Oscar telecast kicked off at around 8 p.m. Which meant that at around 10:45, we could count on the whole ride grinding to a halt for a large-scale production number that would stretch on interminably. "And now, ladies and gentlemen, we present our tribute to the film reel!" "Join us, ladies and gentlemen, as we salute the concession stand popcorn man!" "Tune up that orchestra, Bill Cont; it's time for a song-and-dance retrospective of famous movies featuring clothespins."

Oy.

This year's broadcast was... okay. Ellen pushed rather hard, I thought, and gags went on too long. Selfies and pizza were funny for a while, but she didn't seem to know when to move it along. I thought the only out-of-the-park laugh she had was appearing as Glinda the Good Witch, albeit late for the Pink rendition of "Over the Rainbow."

Speeches were fine. Nobody was outlandishly dressed (Cher!). And then there was John Travolta.

I thought, like other years, that the whole evening could have used an extra dash of class (but it was certainly an improvement over last year with Seth McFarlane). Proposal: Academy rules are changed so that Julie Andrews presents every Best Picture winner from here on out.

Nothing classier, in my book, than a dose of Julie Andrews.

So there's another notch in my Oscar-watching belt. I guess when it comes to this yearly overblown tribute to the glitz and glamor of Hollywood, there's only one thing I can truly say:

I like it. I really, really like it.

Walking the Walk

In the realm of pet ownership, there are dog walkers.

And there are dog-pottyers.

Dog walkers are out there every day -- often multiple times per day -- exercising their dogs and allowing them to attend to bathroom issues.

Dog pottyers either have fenced-in yards or other means of sending the dog out to attend to nature's call and then return inside. Exercise is handled via other means.

I don't judge. Each method has its advantages and disadvantages.

But me? I'm a dog walker.

The habit may actually be genetic: My Dad was a devoted dog walker. He and his Basset Hound, Murphy, used a time-tested route through the neighborhood, and Murph was so accustomed to it, he would not vary it. Not one step. Which my grandmother found out when she tried to shorten it one day, and Murph protested by plopping on the sidewalk and refusing to budge.

Dad had to go rescue her after she failed to return about an hour after her departure (this was in the pre-cellphone dark ages).

So when we got Wesley, our Black Lab, he and I walked. Mornings. Evenings. For more than 10 years.

And when Parker came along in Wesley's wake, I maintained the same routine.

It's just the way I handle dog ownership. I've said more than once that if we had a fenced yard and I let Parker out, hopeful that he would do what he needed to do, he'd merely stand there and stare at the glass.

"Dad... Dad? Hey, Dad! What am I doing out here while you're in there?!?"

For the most part, I don't mind these walks at all. In the mornings, it's a terrific chance for me to just.... think. Quietly walk. Sift through some of the issues of the day prior. Brainstorm. Pray. Spend some time in peace. I do an awful lot of "writing" during these walks. Thinking up blog topics for example. Or rolling around ideas for work projects. They're a great time to fashion headlines, I've found.

This winter, however, walking Parker is a challenge.

For one, we've lost almost all our sidewalks to snowpack. That means he and I are in the streets, a dangerous place to be when the sun's not even up (No worries, though: He wears a lighted collar and I carry a high-powered flashlight). Or when we do manage to find a cleared sidewalk, I'll encounter the "snowblown path to nowhere," which is a homeowner who will clear his/her own walk, but not one square inch of snow off a neighbor's walk. So the path leads to a solid wall of nowhereville. Leaving me to tromp through the drifts and get back in the street.

Bad form, Mr. Snowblow. Can't you at least clear to a nearby driveway, where pedestrians and dog walkers can exit to the street without climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro?

My nadir was about three weeks ago, when the morning was dark and dreary and a cold rain was soaking the roadways. Within seconds, my jeans were wet, and a bitter wind was causing the denim to freeze to my thighs. Insult was added to injury when a car roared by us, spraying me with salty, mucky, slush that hit my cheeks, slid down my neck and ended up somewhere between my sweatshirt and my skin.

Parker, for what it's worth, didn't seem to mind any of this at all. In fact, the cold and snow don't bother him in the least. He loves romping through the drifts: "C'mon, Dad. C'mon. c'mon. c'mon, c'mon!!!"

Ah, the eternal cheeriness of the Labrador Retriever.

It's hard to fault him for it.

But I somehow start thinking it would be easier to take at 10:30 a.m. on a 75-degree day in May.

Cold Hearted

Eileen gave me a chocolate Reece's Peanut Butter Heart for Valentine's Day.

And a card.

I immediately put the heart in the freezer.

You see, I do like chocolate. I'm not over-the-top crazy about it, but I do enjoy the taste.

But for me, it's enhanced when cold. Especially anything from Reece's, where the cocoa and peanut butter marry into something truly decadent when they're brittle-hard.

My family teases me about this. A lot. They wonder if this is a holdover from my childhood; that perhaps I got in trouble at some point for making some kind of chocolatey mess with a dessert. Messy Marvin-style.

I'm not sure... I don't remember any trauma resulting from punishment for a face smeared with the remnants of a Three Musketeers.

But I suppose it is possible.

I do remember being dragged to my older brother's football games and, in an effort to placate my whining, being given a Styrofoam cup of cocoa. But I don't think I knew it was cocoa; I think I thought it was merely chocolate milk.

And I can still recall the bitter feel of a burnt tongue, which was not at all mitigated by the sweet contents of the hot chocolate.

I do, therefore, have an iffy relationship with melty, gooey chocolate.

Two years running, I tried to make Eileen a lava cake for her birthday. She's a dyed-in-the-cocoa-bean chocoholic who I knew would appreciate a serving of soft, fudgy cake, centered with a gush of warm, molten chocolate in the center.

Trouble is, I am 0 for 2 in trying to pull this off. Mine was edible, but more like a hockey puck filled with a soft Hershey kiss.

Maybe it's a general feeling of meh when it comes to chocolate things in general. I'm not a big brownie guy, even though my family will dicker over a pan of uncut brownies, choosing either a "middle" or a "corner" as the best cut. And hot fudge leaves me kind of cold. As far as candy goes, I like other flavors mixed in with my chocolate, rather than just chocolate alone. So Reece's is a favorite. As are Peppermint Patties. And chocolate-covered strawberries.

But all in all, I'd rather have a good slice of cheesecake, thank you.

Still, when it comes to desserts, there is one thing that I enjoy being soft and mushy.

Ice cream.

Nobody Home!

I think I was raised on a too-steady diet of Disney entertainment.

It has affected my worldview.

In short, I think I anthropomorphize too much. I ascribe human attributes to things that don't necessarily deserve or require them.

Parker for example. I worry about him being bored during the day. Despite knowing that he probably slumbers the hours away in a state of snoring bliss.

Abandoned houses also resonate with me.

I'm fascinated by them, actually. 

How does that happen? I know that fortunes can change overnight, often for the worse, and families have been known to creep out of their residences just ahead of creditors.

But still.

It's a house. You lived there. You loved there.

And what stays behind? I see structures left to the elements and wonder. What happened to all the happy Christmases there? The babies that were brought across the threshold. The family parties. I think about the cutting of the lawn, the repairs to a leaky faucet, the repainting of the dining room walls.

How does someone walk away from all that?

And what's left in the wake? Dilapidation. Ruin. Weeds in the floorboards. Shingles askew. Windows that have been shattered by too many teenagers with too many rocks and too much time on their hands.

It depresses me. So I tend not to dwell on it. 

But when I see a hulking edifice that sits alone on a property, being gradually erased by the passage of time, I sigh a deep sigh.

I suppose some of my reaction is that my own roots go so deep. When my parents moved out of the house we three boys were raised in, it was harder on us than them! Dad saw liberation from shoveling snow and hammering down loose shingles on the roof.

I saw a goodbye to the staircase in the basement, where, if you were on the kitchen phone with a girl, was the only place for some privacy, thanks to an extra-long stretchy cord. Which I think we over-stretched until it eventually snapped and needed replacement.

I saw a farewell to the windows that used to hold fans in the brutal summers, providing some (but not much) relief from the stifling stillness of a July night.

I saw a kitchen that would no longer smell of Mom's pies. Or contain the sound of Dad humming while he dried the dishes.

Confession here:

I still drive by the old house. I'd love to stop and ring the bell and ask to look around, but that would be creepy. So it's enough for me to just drive by slowly.

And remember.

Be happy, house. As happy as you made us.

May Your Days Be Merry and... FFFTZZZT!

I love outside Christmas lights.

I have always loved outside Christmas lights.

When we were kids, the inside of the house was never decorated before Christmas itself; our tradition was that Santa brought everything! Tree. Trains. Gee-gaws and trinkets. And presents.

So when we went to bed Christmas Eve, the only signs of the season inside the house were our stockings, hung on the railing going upstairs.

But outside!!

Outside were colored lights on the bushes; they were the big, fat bulbs that heated up in your hand, much to the chagrin of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. And a large spotlight on the front lawn that illuminated a handmade DellaRobbia wreath on the front door. And orange-bulbed candles in every window.

So when it came time for our own holiday traditions, I made a big deal out of outside Christmas lights. We have a series of bushes at the far end of our property. They are just a few feet from a main thoroughfare that goes northward through our community, and for years, I've stretched an extension cord from the house to these bushes and strung lights on them.

As well as draping lights on the flora on the front lawn. And the porch. And on the garage overhang.

But this year...

Well, suffice to say that 2013 is the year of Epic Fail Christmas Lights.

First, the string that goes on a lamppost at the end of the driveway must have some sort of plug issue because its performance this December has been very spotty. For reasons unknown to me, I'll arrive home in the dark and find them brightly and colorfully lit. And on other nights... Nada.

And the lights out back have had a seemingly endless variety of plug/timer/cord issues. One of my favorite sights this time of year is to round the bend after a hard day's work and find those trees gleaming. This year? Mostly a home run, but they've needed constant care and re-configuration along the way.

I cannot seem to settle on a once-and-done solution.

And then there's Santa. On north side of our property, out front, is a blow-up Santa. He frankly needs replacing, as he's got a rather nasty rip in his shoes that has been duct taped. Between his leak and the heavy weather we've had, most evenings he's been face-planted in the snow, looking like a frat boy the day after a killer party. I'm going to go shopping either just before or just after the holiday for a new blow-up, in hopes of catching something appealing on sale.

And as of right now, we're dark. I lost one timer/plug combo and jury-rigged a solution using my one remaining workable one. And just last night, that one now seems to also have given up the ghost.

In an act of possible defiance, though, the lamppost lights decided last night to take up the slack and light themselves.

About the only party to all this who is consistently satisfied is the electric company.

Burn on, lights. Burn on.